


See How I Am Faithful

by lar_laughs



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Deaf Character, Deaf Clint Barton, F/M, you never need to apologize
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-09
Updated: 2012-07-09
Packaged: 2017-11-09 11:50:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/455105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lar_laughs/pseuds/lar_laughs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A follow up piece to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/451226">New Mexico State of Mind</a>.  This one is set post-Avengers movie (2012).</p><p>Natasha sits at Clint's bedside, prepared for anything other than what the doctor tells her.  She knows, in her heart of hearts, that she's the last person he needs beside him while he goes through this rehabilitation.  For his own good, she walks away.  And then comes back again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	See How I Am Faithful

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to Aster, who's beginning to think that I don't know my past tense from my present tense. Not only do you complete me... but you completed me, as well. *grins*
> 
> This is for everyone who read NMSoM and gave it kudos or comments. You guys rock my world!
> 
> This is the [lettiebobettie](http://lettiebobettie.tumblr.com/post/24790338444/you-know-nat-has-naturally-red-hair-and-she) piece of art that inspired this story:  
> [](http://lettiebobettie.tumblr.com/post/24790338444/you-know-nat-has-naturally-red-hair-and-she)

She wasn’t sure how much more of these four walls she could handle. Per Clint’s standing instructions, there was a window with a view of the outside but Natasha thought that might have been a big part of her problem. From here, she could see the trees marking the border of the property. Beyond that, a street with cars driving by and a sidewalk where people were going about their daily business. Everything was normal out there. Even the rain. The weathermen all predicted a downpour and here it was, cleansing away the stain of the last attack. No more blood on the street.

Even though this particular view isn’t of the street where Clint had lay dying only ten hours ago, it was like she could see it when she stared through these rain-smudged glass. She also saw it when she closed her eyes. Since she could only see Clint in one of those scenarios, she kept her eyes open.

His fingers trembled slightly in her gentle grasp. His body finally had permission to be weak and was taking full advantage of it. When he was awake, they didn’t shake. Not ever. She’d seen him shoot over two hundred arrows without having to stop and flex his fingers or work the kinks out of his arm or shoulder. Whoever said Clint Barton wasn’t a superhero had never seen him scan the horizon from on top of a building, picking out details that anyone else would have missed. Not even JARVIS could fine tune Tony’s senses to pick up what Clint could see.

His last words to her yesterday morning were, “It’s not like they need me on this one. I’m not one of the superheroes.” He’d gone into the fight half-expecting to lose. She couldn’t help but wonder if that had something to do with why he was in this bed right now. If he hadn’t gotten clear of the building because he suddenly didn’t think he could. Or if it was something more.

In the truest sense of the word, she wasn’t a superhero either. All she could claim to be was an experiment gone wrong. They broke her before rebuilding her into the perfect assassin. Then Clint found her and reformed her yet again without doing any breaking. He pushed, yes, but never to the breaking point. Only to the point where the pain meant she was healing into something straight and true.

“And I healed,” she whispered to the room, wishing she had someone to have this conversation with. Not just someone, though. She wanted to be having this conversation with Clint. “So will you. Of this injury and... the other.”

All of her thoughts must have been written on her face for the world to see because Steve walked in the room, his eyes opening wide with shock as he stared at her. The man was smart, no matter what other people thought. Even she had to admit that he caught on to things that other people missed. He quickly averted his eyes before giving away that he’d seen her discomfort. “I came by to tell you that Bruce’s working on the problem. Tony wanted you to know that he would have been helping but he’s been tasked with clean up.”

“Clean up. Right.” That meant that the threat was still out there. One battle merged into another because it was never enough. No matter how hard they worked or what they sacrificed, there was always another bad guy waiting in the wings. It was a life that Natasha loved, just not when Clint was lying in a hospital bed in a building that didn’t exist, hooked up to monitors that clicked out a progress of his well-being every second.

Steve’s touch on her shoulder was tentative. When she turned to face him, surprised that she’d missed him moving while she was wrapped up in her worry for Clint, he grimaced but didn’t jump back. “Can I get you anything?”

It never failed to surprise her how nice Steve was. No, that wasn’t the right word. He was... sincere. Whatever he felt was what he showed the world. If he was angry, he was angry. If he was happy, he was happy. Now he was concerned and it was impossible not to see that in his face and his words. Natasha envied him his emotions.

“No.” _Make his hands stop trembling in mine/_ “I’m fine.” _I want to cry but I can’t do it here._ “He’s going to be fine.” _But I’m not. The only person who can make me better is unconscious._ “Thank you.” _Damn you! Damn you all! Why isn’t this you?_

“Bruce wanted you to come by when you could. He’s got some questions.” Steve stepped away, his face a mirror of the streak of fear she hadn’t been able to contain. “Just questions. About Clint. You’re the best one to answer them. He’d come here but... well, once was enough for him.”

“It was nice he came. Nice that you all came.”

Instead of answering, Steve walked over to one of the sturdy hospital chairs that Natasha had refused. He repositioned it so he could see the entire room, the door and the window all without moving. “How about I keep watch for awhile. You go talk to Bruce. Maybe get something to eat. There’s still a couple of hours yet before he’s supposed to wake up.”

It looked like he wasn’t going to move from his new perch and Natasha had no desire to be stuck in this room while having to make inane conversation. At this moment, Hell was having to pretend that she cared about anything that wasn’t related to Clint.

***

Steve was surprised when Natasha actually seemed to take him up on his offer to watch over Clint. He’d had every intention of going to help Tony after dropping by to deliver Bruce’s message but now, it seemed, this was where he was really needed.

Try as he might, Steve couldn’t help but hear Natasha’s murmured words as she slipped off the bed, bending over the unconscious man to drop a kiss on his forehead. “Sum presentialiter. Absens in remota.”

At first he thought she was speaking Russian until he realized that there was a part of his past coming to nag at him. He understood her. It took a moment to think back to the Latin he’d learned as a child but it came to him with sudden clarity as he recognized the words for what they were. She hadn’t spoken the whole quote, only the last line, but he felt a lump in his throat as the words became meaning.

_Love me faithfully. See how I am faithful.  
With all my heart and all my soul,  
I am with you, even though I am far away._

She didn’t glance at him as she left the room but Steve wasn’t sure he could handle much more of the naked pain on her face. Seeing the famed Black Widow looking as if she was feeling something, anything, was out of character for the assassin. Knowing what quote she was referencing as a goodbye message was even worse.

“Strong women are going to be the death of me,” he muttered, pushing down the suddenly vision of Peggy watching him with the small twist of a smile that had always made his heart beat fast. If Clint was awake, Steve figured he’d agree they were both destined to a life of never knowing if the person they loved would bite their hand or lick it.

***  
“You wanted to talk to me?”

“I didn’t expect you so soon.” Bruce stood completely still as he watched Natasha walk through the door. If anyone else came in, they might have thought that he was frightened of the woman, but they both knew differently. He was letting her acclimate to his presence. “But thank you.”

She was holding up, but only just barely. There was a veneer of her usual toughness but it didn’t run as deep as it normally did. Bruce wondered what would happen when Clint woke up. He didn’t know her well enough to know how easily she slid between these two personas, nor did he know how Clint fit into this change.

If he hadn’t been in the room when the doctor came in with his pronouncement of Clint’s well-being and then the sudden push of bad news, he would never have believed what he had seen.

The SHIELD doctor mentioned doing further tests as soon as the man was awake again. When everyone stared at him like he was crazy for saying Clint was going to be fine in one breath and needing further tests in the other, he grew concerned. “Hasn’t he told you? Any of you?”

She’d gone completely still, the hand smoothing down the sheet by his shoulder (as if she would have rather been smoothing down the skin peeking out from under the bandages) had stopped in mid-stroke. “Told us what?”

“The explosion a few weeks ago.” 

“He was fine. He walked away from it without a scratch.” It looked like steel bars were reinforcing her spine as she turned to look at the doctor, giving him the full impact of her glare. “Why would you need to run further tests?”

As the doctor explained about concussive blasts and ruptured ear drums, the steel melted out of Natasha’s spine so that only Tony’s quick reflexes had kept her from ending up on the ground. No, Clint hadn’t told anyone about his visits to the doctor over the last week. As they watched Natasha find her center again, it had been easy to tell that they would be talking about it as soon as he woke up.

***  
A shower had gone a long way to helping Natasha feel human once again. The smell of the hospital was still in her nostrils but at least it didn’t feel like it was clinging to her skin. She’d picked her most comfortable pair of jeans, the ones getting more threadbare every time she washed them, and a soft t-shirt. The armor came next, in the form of a tight-fitting black leather jacket and the familiar weight of her personal gun in the thigh holster she was never without these days. She might have been comfortable but she was still Black Widow and ready for the next fight.

After the day she’d had, the very last place she wanted to be was the lab here in Stark Tower. Ever since Tony had invited him, Bruce had set up shop and hadn’t been budged. If anyone wanted to find Dr. Banner, they looked for him on the eleventh floor of the building, otherwise known as Hulk Manner. Even Bruce had been able to smile about the name when it had come to his attention.

She was only going to make the stop because she’d been asked. It was silly to still be scared of Bruce when he’d gone out of his way to be polite to her. Maybe that was it, though. She didn’t handle polite well on the best of days. It always made her feel like she owed something in return. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t figure what it was that Bruce wanted from her.

“Steve says you had some questions. Have you discovered anything?”

Bruce gestured to a couch along one of the walls but she stayed by the door. There was no way she was going to let anything bar her exit to this room and there was too much floor space between the sitting area and where she was now. Besides, she was too tired to exert any effort into what society required.

Without much noise for his size, Bruce crossed the room to her. So that she understood his intentions, he held out a folder the entire way. “I need to know what you remember of the last two weeks. How was Clint acting? Did anything seem off? Odd? How was his balance?”

She felt her heart stop when his last word triggered a memory. “Clint tripped the other day. One of those instances where you blame the carpet. I didn’t think anything of it then... but he doesn’t trip. He’s got incredible balance. Even when he’s drunk. And Steve was able to make contact a couple of times when they were sparring the other day. Clint can normally stay out of Steve’s reach but he couldn’t that day. Did Steve tell you about that?”

Bruce nodded. “I’ve already talked to Steve about that day. He mentioned that you were there. How did Clint explain it to you?”

“He didn’t. I... we... he didn’t give me the opportunity to ask and then I forgot about it.” Their usual post-workout makeout session had turned intense when she’d tried breaking the first kiss. Before she’d had time to react, it had turned into something more than their usual kissing and pawing at sweaty clothing before finally heading to individual showers. She’d ended up on her back, her thoughts taken up with yet another unusual occurrence. If it hadn’t been a single instance in the midst of a string of Clint singling her out for sex, she might have thought it strange. Now, she realized that every one of those moments was strange.

She crossed her arms over her torso, not bothering to take the folder. There was nothing in there she wanted to see. “Now that I think about it, he spent a lot of time being strange but I thought it was just,” she sighed, “Clint being Clint. He gets strange sometimes.”

“Like how?”

“It bothers him that he’s not super. But suddenly he was bringing it up all the time. And he was being... amorous. At first, I thought it was because we’d agreed to live here and there were suddenly all these other men around but it’s really no different than living on any of the SHIELD installations. Then he was gone all the time so I thought he was taking extra missions but Maria confirmed that he hadn’t been assigned to anything.”

“Where was he going?”

“I’m not sure but I smelled popcorn on him once, when he came back.”

“Popcorn?” Bruce’s eyebrow shot up.

“You know, that oily smell that penetrates clothing when it’s being made. It’s like coffee. Very distinctive. It usually means he’s been to a circus.”

“Circus?”

Natasha reached out to tap the folder with a knuckle. “Read his file, Dr. Banner. All of it. Clint was raised in the circus. Where do you think he got his talent with the bow? That wasn’t SHIELD’s doing. That’s pure sideshow magic you see every time he unsheaths it.” She smiled slightly as his eyes narrowed. “Look, I’ve got to head back to the hospital. If you have any other questions, you can text me. I’ll have my phone on.”

“Thank you but I think I’ve got more than enough to help me.”

“And will you be able to help him?”

His nod was slow, as if he was afraid of offering too much. “It’s looking promising but I’m not offering up miracles.”

“And we wouldn’t think of taking them.”

***  
The hospital room was crowded when she finally made it back. Tony was sitting on the other side of the room from Steve, tapping a finger over the face of his phone while giving Steve and Maria a rundown of what he’d been doing. He stopped talking as she entered but started up again as she acknowledged them all with a glance before walking over to sit on the bed.

Clint didn’t look any different. A sheen of sweat had slicked back his hair near his ears but his skin was cool to the touch when she laid a hand on his forehead. When she picked up his hand, it was still trembling.

“If you need anything,” Maria murmured over Tony’s droning as she stood up, “Fury has me stationed down the hall. Thought I’d swing by and see how things were going. I’ll come back by later.”

And by later, Natasha knew she meant when Clint woke up. Now that everyone was aware of Clint’s short-coming, the room would be full of well-wishers and white-coats as soon as his eyes cracked open. She had another hour with him. Not much more.

“Boys, can I have the room?” she asked quietly as Maria left. Both stuttered their apologies, nearly upsetting their chairs as they hurried from the room.

When she was alone, Natasha wiggled down until she was laying right next to Clint again. For the first time, his hand was still as she held it. She didn’t know if that was because he was starting to surface or just her good fortune. “Odds are really good that you wouldn’t be able to hear me even if you were awake right now. I’ve never been fond of odds. You know that.”

She lifted his hand to her mouth for a kiss in the palm before moving it to cradle her cheek. Where to start? “I don’t want you to think that I left you because I was mad at you. Or that I can’t handle what’s going on. You’re going to think that, I know. That’s why you didn’t tell me what was happening. Why you tried to tell me goodbye all those times you just ended up shagging me. You thought I would walk away. That I _could_ walk away. That you wouldn’t be good enough for me.”

His hand began trembling again, the middle two fingers bending slightly as if they wanted to pull at a bowstring. To give her own hands something to do, she traced his fingers, sliding sensitive fingertips over calluses that were put there with hard work and determination. Two things that are going to see him through this. Two things she couldn’t help him with. In fact, things she could hinder if she stuck around much longer.

“You’re the best of us, Clint. I know you don’t see that, being just as screwed up as everyone else. You complained about not being super when you should have concentrated on the fact that you’re special. Special to me. Special to everyone.”

Her eyes found the ever-present camera in every room in any SHIELD building. Speaking slowly and enunciating, she pitched her voice a little louder. “Try to remember that, will you? When you get down and depressed, remember that you’re special. And once this gets straightened out, we’ll figure out the rest. Okay?”

Getting off the bed was like pulling a scab away from a wound and she ached like she’d been the one flung off two buildings in a matter of so many weeks. She unclasped the tiny gold cross she’d made sure to put on after her shower. It caught the dim light of the room, looking as much like a religious icon here in hospital as it had when her grandmother had worn it to the tiny stone chapel when she was a girl.

“Sum presentialiter. Absens in remota.” Every time she said it out loud, it was a promise. One day, when secrecy and disguise no longer mattered, she intended to have it tattooed over her heart.

These were the words they said to each other. No, not love. Never love. Something better. A promise of forever. And once she promised something, she would move heaven and earth to see it fulfilled.

Looping her family heirloom around his hand so he wouldn’t lose it, she placed on last kiss on his forehead. It was probably her imagination but it looked like his lips curved up into a smile. No, there wasn’t time to check his pulse to see if he was waking up even though she wanted nothing more than to bend closer to see if his breathing had changed.

She turned back to the camera. “See that he gets this feed. When he’s up for it. I trust your judgement.”

Without another word, she left the room, never once looking back.

***

The night air was cool on her skin, still carrying the trauma of a sunburn from a mishap in Spain. It seemed she couldn’t pick out a decent car anymore. Not without input from Clint. He was going to give her so much grief when he heard about her escapades. This one had died within ten miles of the city she’d bought it in on the hottest day of the year when no one else seemed to be out for a drive in that direction. 

At least, she hoped he would give her grief. She’d been home for nearly three hours without a single sighting of him. No one seemed to be hiding him from her, a real possibility since it surely looked like she left when she was needed most. He just wasn’t where anyone thought he would be.

She didn’t dare ask them for details of the weeks she’d been gone. It would hurt too much to see the censure of people she considered friends but who didn’t know the first thing about her. About how the two of them worked. The relationship that she and Clint had was always a thing of speculation at SHIELD, talked about and whispered as if what they did was wrong. It would hurt too much to see the same thing from these new friends.

What she did, it wasn’t wrong. In her heart of hearts, she knew that she would have messed him up. Just like he knew that he’d had to walk away from her when he first dumped her at SHIELD headquarters. Already, they’d been too close. It would have been too personal. They were already too bound up in each other. Being a part of rehabilitation only meant that they might come to depend too much on each other. They still had to survive apart from each other.

Even if it meant a ten mile walk through the heat of the day to scream at a man about his shoddy mechanical skills when the best car mechanic she knew was back in the states, doing god knew what with himself. She’d needed him but she couldn’t have him. Even in the best of circumstances, she wouldn’t have called him.

Just like he wouldn’t have wanted her around. God, she hoped he hadn’t wanted her around and she hadn’t messed this up completely.

“Where are you, Clint?” 

She could barely hear her own voice as the wind carried it out over the city. When she heard his, “I’m right here,” coming from behind her, she jumped in a very un-master assassin sort of way.

And he wasn’t just right behind her. No, he was a good fifty paces behind her, both of them in the dark with heavy shadows all around. Even though he had light behind him, highlighting his body, she knew she was out of the direct beam.

“How?” She whispered her question as a test just as much as she did because her throat was closing up.

“Stark Technologies and Banner know-how, mostly. They’re still working on the one for work so all I’ve got is the prototype for everyday wear. Bruce said this one is bulky but I don’t see it. Can’t imagine what the next one will look like if it’s smaller than this one.”

“How much?” Her voice was a little louder as she worked at clearing her throat.

The smart man that he was, Clint didn’t give her a price tag. Instead, he shrugged one shoulder. “A little over eighty percent. They were able to stabilize the destruction inside my ear. Reattach everything into a run around to my brain through a computer about the size of a pin. Or it will be a pin, when Tony and Bruce stop arguing about manufacturing rights.”

“Manufacturing rights?”

“Naming rights, really.” He stuffed his hands into his pockets, hunching his shoulders as he stared at the ground. “It’s stupid.”

Because she’d seen that posture before and knew exactly what it meant, she didn’t waste any time launching herself at him. She didn’t care that she was as noisy as a herd of cattle as she moved across the rooftop, only that he was feeling uncomfortable with himself. Not her. 

“Missed you,” he murmured into her hair as they latched on to each other, fitting just as perfectly as they always had. “You changed the color again.”

Natasha pulled away from him enough that she could see his eyes. There was only humor there. No, strike that. Humor and more than a little heat. She wasn’t the only one who was glad she was home. “Needed something more downplayed for the area I was in so I darkened it again. It should wash out soon.”

“I don’t like it dark.” The words were said with a predatory growl, deep enough to send shivers of delight down into the pit of her stomach and beyond.

She laughed against his mouth. “I’ll color it tonight.”

“Tomorrow is soon enough.”

“Well, then.” His hands were sweeping down her back to the curve of her backside and back up again. She hasn’t been able to convince her hands to move. They’ve climbed up under his shirt, pressing into the hard muscles of his abdomen. “I’ll do it tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow.”

And it was the last thing either one of them said for several minutes. There was nothing else to say that their bodies weren’t telling each other in many and various ways.

***

“See how I am faithful, with all my heart and soul,” Clint whispered as he brushed his hand through her hair. They were in his bed now, having only barely made it off the roof before the sun cracked open the horizon. From here, she could see her grandmother’s tiny gold cross swinging from the curtain rod, the place of honor he’d given it when he’d finally been allowed back in his room at Stark Tower. Right where it could catch the light. Of all the rooms she’d seen in the building, this had to be her favorite. If she had her way, they wouldn’t move from this spot for the rest of the day or in any way ruin the lazy day attitude.

But it appeared Clint had other ideas. “Bruce was angry with you.”

She stiffened, trying not to let the words find their mark but unable to put up her defenses so quickly. It was exactly what he’d had in mind, probably from the start. While she wanted to feel betrayed, all she could work up to was a dull ache of sadness.

“Bruce is always angry with me. This just changed his focus a little bit. Who else thought I was a heartless bitch?”

“Heartless? Steve. Bitch? Tony. I think Pepper stayed on your side. It was pretty hard to tell because she was never around. Stark Industries has something planned in Tokyo and she spent a lot of her time overseas.”

“Oh, right. The Mega Palace. I saw advertisements for that.”

He grasped her hair, pulling her back until she could look him in the eyes. “I thought you said you were in Spain.”

“I was a lot of places.” When the tension on her scalp eased up, she rolled over and sat up. Settling herself back down against the headrest yet physically away from the man beside her, she stretched and yawned. “Tell me about the process. Was it painful?”

“Which part? Waking up that first day was like having drinking mugs over my ears. There was this ringing every time anyone talked over a whisper. I couldn’t understand anything anyone was saying, though. It was like being in a foreign country where you know the language but not the dialect. I was always a step behind. And everyone wanted to talk to me.”

Clint flipped over on his stomach, one of his hands stretched out to stroke the bare skin of her thigh. “Fury showed me the tape on the third day. Guess he figured I was about as low as I was going to get.”

“How low was that?”

“I stripped off all the wires they had attached to me and found the darkest, highest corner in the place. It was a tough climb, seeing as my balance had gotten a lot worse before it got better. I nearly fell twice. He told me that he’d tell me where you were if I’d come down.”

She was almost afraid to ask. “And did you? Come down?”

“Not for awhile,” was his quiet reply. A silence stretched out for a long time between them. “But the not knowing was driving me nuts. I had to know you were okay.”

 _I haven’t been okay until I saw you on that rooftop_ , she wanted to tell him. The closest she’d come had been the night she’d stayed at the hostel in Bavaria. She couldn’t have said what about it was the most comforting except that it had been the first place that had felt like home in a long time. Maybe it was the comfort of the Slavic languages she heard. Maybe it was the smells. And then a little boy had walked up and down the hallway, a toy bow over one arm and a pocket full of small arrows. One had pinged harmlessly off her leg yet she’d sunk to the wooden floor and cried for an hour, long after the boy’s father had dragged him away with a firm reminder that he wasn’t to shoot anyone ever again.

“And when did you stop hating me?”

His hand stuttered on her leg, stopping for a brief second before starting to slide back down to her knee. There was no tremble, though. Just emotion clogging up his usual gentle glide. “Yesterday evening. When I saw you in the shadows.”

The laughter that bubbled up out of her had a hysterical vibe about it but she didn’t try to stop it. “Funny. That was about when I stopped hating myself, too.”

Before she could pull herself together, she was crushed against his chest, his arms holding her tight. Since she couldn’t move her arms to wrap around his neck, her hands clutched at his skin, the laughter turning to tears. They stayed there, wrapped in each other, until her sobs subsided.

“Tell me you’re going to be okay.” Her voice came out ragged but firm.

“I’m going to be more than okay. Bruce promised me I’d hear better than I ever have. The balance issues are still being worked out but I can still shoot.” Clint pressed his mouth against her forehead. “I’m going to be fine. Better than fine. Nearly super.”

Her laugh was only somewhat like a sob this time, her emotions still on a roller coaster between deliriously happy to be back with Clint and devastated that they’d been apart for those weeks. “Tell me we’re going to be okay.”

His kisses drifted down, covering first one cheek and then the other, until his lips slid across hers. “See how I am faithful. With all my heart and all my soul, I am with you, even though I am far away.” 

“Is it enough?” she whispered, tears clogging up her eyes but not falling. With each of his declarations, she was feeling more of herself coming back. More of the stability that ensured that she was able to do what it was that she needed to do. 

His hands, strong and steady, framed her face. “It’s enough.”

***  
Tony glared at Natasha as she grabbed a mug from above the sink. They had been in a different place when she was here last but things got moved around when Thor decided the one thing he couldn’t live without was macaroni and cheese the day that Darcy introduced him to Costco so they had to rearrange some things to fit the carload of blue boxes. Even though she hadn’t been here when the change was discussed and finally (FINALLY!) carried out, she seemed pretty comfortable with the placement of mugs and spoons and creamer. Enough to be a further irritant in his already bad day. 

“Who said you lived here anymore?”

She glanced at him over her shoulder, her eyebrow raised slightly, before going back to watching the coffee brew. “I’m just getting a cup of coffee.”

“With one of Thor’s mugs.” They were all Thor’s mugs now, most of them chipped and a few with irreparable cracks from the times he’d forgotten that good food and drink weren’t to be celebrated by smashing the china to the floor. Tony kept his mugs in his office. He had no idea where anyone else had secreted their favorites away but they knew to bring them to the kitchen when they wanted something to drink.

She walked to the door, hung her head out and called, “Thor, may I use one of your mugs?”

“Yes, Madam Spider,” he yelled back.

“Thor says I can use his cup. Does the coffee belong to anyone specific? Do I need to start asking around if I want a glass of water?”

Since he can’t think of anything else to say, he just goes for the real reason he’s angry with her. “You hurt Clint.” 

“For a bit, yes.”

She was supposed to deny it. As always, Natasha wasn’t playing by the rules. Well, he’d show her who ran things around here. “It made me angry. I threw all your stuff out.”

“Yep. Bruce brought me the box this morning.” She turned from the coffee pot, the cracked mug in her hands. “Thanks for wrapping everything up all nicely like that before taking it to the curb, by the way. I don’t think I’ve ever had my stuff moved so nicely before. First rate job. If you ever decide to change your career, you’d make a first rate moving man.”

“Clint’s not even here today. He’s in Boston, last I heard. And you don’t have a room here anymore. I’m having it turned into a swimming pool. Steve likes to swim laps.”

Her phone beeped but she didn’t grab for it immediately, as if this conversation was more important than the text message. “Look, I’m going to apologize for this once. I’m sorry I ruined your day when I hurt Clint. Now, I’d like you to apologize to me for hurting Pepper.”

“When did I... which time?”

“Exactly. You handle your own shit and I’ll handle mine.” She pulled the phone out of her pocket, flipping it open with one hand while she took a sip of the hot coffee. A small smile curved her lips into a bow, her eyes more at peace than he’d ever seen them. “I need to return this text but it’s been nice talking to you, Tony. Maybe we can do it again sometime soon.”

“Sure. Anytime.” As she walked by him, Tony could just make out the first letters of her response. _LOV_

In stunned silence, Tony watched her walk out of the kitchen. “Well,” he said to the empty room, “aren’t you the five year old these days.”


End file.
